In the previous chapter, Egypt has been exhibited as the centre of intelligence in the history of ancient art; and having explained the connexion which can still be traced in the few remaining monuments of the East, we now turn from the parent source to trace the progress of refinement in the West, where, first in Greece, the human mind awoke to the full consciousness of its capacious grasp, and of its exquisite sensibilities.

The universal origin of sculptural representation, already noticed, in the alliance which man forms with natural objects as shadowing forth the affections or the regrets of the heart, is nowhere so conspicuous as in Greece. Here art was poetry from the beginning; her consecrated groves, her winding streams, her flowery plains, the azure depths of her mountains, became at once the residence and the representatives of those beings, whether divine or heroic, who constituted her theology. By a people, simple in their habits, yet ardent in their feelings, this early faith was long remembered,—such reminiscences deeply tincturing much of what is most exquisitely descriptive and sentimental in Grecian poetry. But a belief so abstract, so untangible in its forms, and so remotely addressed to the senses, would soon prove insufficient to maintain effectual empire over the passions. Attempts were speedily made to secure, as it were, the more immediate presence and protection of the objects of veneration or of worship. Men's desires in this respect, however, as in all other instances, would necessarily be limited by their knowledge and their powers. In the primitive ages, accordingly, objects rude and unfashioned as we learn from history, were adored as representing the divinities of Greece. Even to the time of Pausanias, stones and trunks of trees, rough and uninformed by art, were preserved in the temples: and though replaced by forms almost divine, still regarded with peculiar veneration, as the ancient images of the deities. As skill improved, these signs began to assume more determinate similitude; and from a square column, the first stage, by slow gradations something approaching to a resemblance of the human figure was fashioned. These efforts at sculpture long continued extremely imperfect. The extremities seem not to have been even attempted; the arms were not separated from the body, nor the limbs from each other, but, like the folds of the drapery, stiffly indicated by deep lines drawn on the surface. Such appears to have been the general state of the art immediately prior to the period when it can first be traced, as cultivated with some degree of success in any particular place. This occurs about twelve centuries before Christ.

The fine arts have never flourished in states not commercial; in this respect, presenting a marked contrast to the origin and progress of poetry and music; a fact singularly exemplified in the condition of those cities where arose the primitive schools in Greece. Sicyon, Ægina, Corinth, and Athens, were the first seats of commerce and of sculpture. Sicyon, with its small but important territory, extending a few miles along the south-eastern extremity of the Corinthian gulf, was the most ancient of the Grecian states, and probably the oldest city of Europe. From the earliest times, it became celebrated for the wealth, enterprise, and intelligence of its population; and from the Sicyonian academy were sent forth many of the most celebrated masters of design; hence Sicyon obtained the venerable appellation of 'Mother of the Arts.' The foundation of this school, though most probably of much higher antiquity, is assigned to Dibutades, who, in the humble occupation of a potter, became the accidental inventor of the art of modelling. For this discovery, so precious in its subsequent effects, he was indebted to the ingenuity of his daughter, who, inspired by love, traced upon the wall, by means of a lamp, the shadowed profile of the favored youth as he slept, that with this imperfect resemblance she might beguile the lingering hours of absence. This outline the father, filling up with clay, formed a medallion, which, even to the time of Pliny, was preserved as a most interesting relic. To the same pleasing origin painting has been ascribed—another instance of that delightful charm, which, to their poetry, their arts, their philosophy even, the Greeks have imparted by the constant union of sentiment and reason—of the heart with the understanding.

The little island, or rather rock, of Ægina, still one of the most interesting spots of Greece, rising above the waves of the Saronic gulf, nearly opposite to Athens, affords a striking illustration of the effects of commercial wisdom. Insignificant in extent, boasting of few productions, it was yet enabled, by this wisdom, long and successfully to maintain the struggle of warfare, and to cherish the arts of peace and of elegance, especially sculpture, in a school, if not the earliest, certainly latest distinguished by originality of style and invention. Smilis was famous by his statues of Juno, especially one at Samos, called by Pliny 'the most ancient image' of that goddess. Even in the works of this, her first master, it is said, were to be discovered a gravity and austere grandeur, the principles of that style visible still in the noble marbles which once adorned, in Ægina, the temple of Jupiter Panhellenius.

Corinth was early more celebrated as the patroness of painting. Concerning DÆdalus, the first of the Athenian sculptors, doubtful or fabulous accounts have reached us; but a careful investigation of circumstances proves, that of whatsoever country a native, he had rendered himself renowned by the exercise of his skill at the court of Minos before settling in Attica. The facts attending his arrival there, and the history of his previous labours, enable us to fix dates, and to trace the true source of improvement in Grecian art at this particular era. Of the early establishments of the Greeks planted in the isles of the Ægean, which even preceded the mother country in the acquisition of wealth and intelligence, the Doric colony of Crete enjoyed, from a very early period, the happiness and consequent power of settled government. External advantages of situation first invited the access, while domestic institutions secured the benefits, of ancient and uninterrupted intercourse with Egypt. Hence the laws and the arts of the Cretans. With the former, the Athenian hero, Theseus, wished to transplant the latter also; and while he gave to his countrymen a similar system of policy, he did not fail to secure the co-operation of one whose knowledge might yield powerful aid in humanizing a rude people by adding new dignity to the objects of national veneration. Accordingly DÆdalus, accompanying the conqueror of the Minotaur to Athens, fixes there the commencement of an improved style, 1234 years before the Christian era. With DÆdalus, the artists already mentioned are described as nearly or altogether contemporaries.

The performances of DÆdalus were chiefly in wood, of which no fewer than nine, of large dimensions, are described as existing in the second century, which, notwithstanding the injuries of fourteen hundred years, and the imperfections of early taste, seemed, in the words of Pausanias, to possess something of divine expression. Their author, as reported by Diodorus, improved upon ancient art, so as to give vivacity to the attitude, and more animated expression to the countenance. Hence we are not to understand, with some, that DÆdalus introduced sculpture into Greece, nor even into Attica; but simply that he was the first to form something like a school of art, and whose works first excited the admiration of his own rude age, while they were deemed worthy of notice even in more enlightened times. Indeed the details preserved in the classic writers, that he raised the arms in varied position from the flanks, and opened the eyes, before narrow and blinking, sufficiently prove the extent of preceding art, and the views we have given on the subject. In these primitive schools, however, many centuries necessarily elapsed, before sculpture can be considered as a regular art. Their founders and pupils were little more than ingenious mechanics, who followed carving among other avocations. Such were EndÆus of Athens, celebrated for three several statues of Minerva; Æpeus, immortalized as the fabricator of the Trojan horse; Icmulous, praised in the Odyssey as having sculptured the throne of Penelope; with many others who must have contributed to the arts of the heroic ages, and who, if they did not rapidly improve, at least kept alive the knowledge of sculpture.

Besides these continental schools, another must be described, which there is every reason to believe was still more ancient, and which certainly attained higher perfection at an earlier period. This was the insular Ionian school, flourishing in those delightful isles that gem the coast of Asia Minor, and chiefly in Samos and Chios. To this the continental academies were even indebted for many of their most distinguished members, who, leaving the narrow sphere of their island homes, naturally preferred the commercial cities from the same causes which had rendered these originally seats of art, opulence, intelligence, and security. Of the Samian masters, RhÆcus, about the institution of the Olympiads, or 777 B. C., first obtained celebrity, as a sculptor in brass, in which art, Telecles and Theodorus, his son and grandson, also excelled. Their works in ivory, wood, and metal, were extant in the age of Pausanius, whose description exhibits the hard and dry manner of Egypt, whence it is probable these artists had derived their improvements, distinguished for very careful finish. The Chian school claims the praise of first introducing the use of a material to which sculpture mainly owes its perfection, namely, marble. The merit of this happy application is assigned to Malas, the father of a race of sculptors, and who is placed about the 38th Olympiad, or 649 years before the Christian era. Michiades inherited and improved the science of the inventor, transmitting to his own son, Anthermus, the accumulated fame and experience of two generations of sculptors, to whom, as to their successors, the beautiful marbles of their native island furnished one rich means of superiority.

In the insular,—and the evidence is in favour of the Chian school,—we also first hear of bronze statues. The earliest works of this kind were not cast, but executed with the hammer. Two manners are discernible; large figures were formed of plates, and hollow, the interior being filled with clay; in small pieces, the separate parts were brought nearly into shape in the solid, afterwards united, and the whole finished by the graver and the file. These methods, in each of which rivets, dovetails, and soldering, formed the joints, were gradually superseded as the knowledge of casting was acquired.

About the commencement of the sixth century before Christ, the school of Sicyon was illustrated by DipÆnus and Scyllis, brothers, the most famous of her ancient masters, and whose age forms an era in the history of the ancient art, marking the first decided advances towards the mastery of the succeeding style. Their labours were in various materials, the most esteemed of marble; and the praise of its application is shared betwixt them and the Chian school. Statues by these artists, in Parian marble, were admired in the time of Pliny, excited the cupidity of Nero, and are subsequently described by one of the Christian fathers, from the peculiar veneration in which they were held. The style of sculpture had hitherto been extremely dry and minute;—a passion for extreme finish, in preference to general effect, had distinguished former masters. This taste had been first introduced, and afterwards maintained, by the limited resources of the art itself, by the mediocrity of artists, and by the dress and ornaments of the time. The hair arranged in undulating locks or spiral curls, and sometimes little separate knobs, was laboured as if to be numbered; the drapery, disposed in the most rigid and methodical folds, finished with painful minuteness; at the same time the limbs and countenance retained much of rude and incorrect form and tasteless expression, but elaborated with the extreme of care. It is far easier, and the common error, both of inferior genius and of an unskilful age, to bestow on parts that talent and application by which a whole is to be perfected. The fault of fastidious and useless labour, with inaccuracy of general result, still attaches to the works of DipÆnus and Scyllis, but great melioration is also apparent; their execution was much more free, the whole effect more powerful, the expression, if not more animated, more natural, and the forms better selected and composed. Colossal heads, now in the British Museum, of Hercules and Apollo, most probably of these masters, afford an admirable illustration of these remarks, and of the style of art at this early period. The fiftieth Olympiad, shows all the necessary inventions and principles of mechanical art fully known and universally practised. Even so early as the twentyninth Olympiad, an equestrian group had been executed in Crete by Aristocles; all the proper materials, and the methods of working them, had long been discovered; in the greatest single work of these times, the shrine of Apollo at AmyclÆ, by Bathycles the Ionian, every description of relief had been exhibited; and lastly, improvement had been fixed on such principles of taste and composition, as enabled succeeding efforts to carry it forward.

The extent of country in which the art was now cultivated, and the zeal evinced in the pursuit, corresponded to, while they increased, the improvement of taste. Attention is now directed to a new school, that of Magna GrÆcia, which (during two thousand years), had been gradually rising into importance and excellence. Its chief seats were at Rhegium and Crotona in Italy, and in Sicily, Syracuse and Agrigentum. In these, the artists first practised in metal chiefly, afterwards in marble; and were among the foremost to perfect iconic statues,—a source of most decided advantage to the art. Omitting farther enumeration, one of these early masters, Dionysius of Rhegium, merits to be mentioned as the first who composed a statue of Homer, erected about the twenty-seventh Olympiad. This was an ideal bronze, in which the traditionary resemblance had been preserved; and from this ancient original were taken those portraits of the father of verse which are mentioned by Pliny as so numerous in his time, and of which one or two exquisite examples still remain.

Thus five centuries and a half before the Christian era, sculpture was practised with success throughout the wide extent of Greece and her colonies. During the former part of the sixth century, however, Sicyon, whose school had added to its ancient supremacy by the superiority of DipÆnus and Scyllis, continued to send forth, in their pupils, the most numerous and efficient artists. Of these, the principal were Learchus, a native of Rhegium; Theocles, Dontas, Doryclidos, and Medon, LacedÆmonians; Tecteus and Angelion of Delos, where they erected a colossal statue of Apollo. At Rhegium, Clearchus was highly esteemed, and had a very flourishing academy; while at Agrigentum, Perillus rivalled the masters of the parent schools. He cast the famous bull of Phalaris, afterwards carried off by the Carthaginians, restored by Scipio, again the object of the cupidity of Verres, and of the praise of Cicero, whose words, ille nobilis Taurus, prove that the skill of those early ages has not been too highly appreciated.

But the fame of all preceding sculptors has suffered from the superior reputation of the two Chian brothers, Bupalus and Anthemis, who lived 517 years B. C. They were the first who brought to a high degree of perfection the discovery of their ancestors,—sculpture in marble. Both Greece and Asia strove to possess their works, which were equally numerous and excellent, and on which was inscribed, not their own, but their father's name and their country's, in the following verse: 'The sons of Anthermus will render thee, O Chios, more renowned than thy vines have yet done.' The beauty of these works caused them to be highly valued in all succeeding ages, and they formed part of those master-pieces removed to Rome by order of Augustus.

During the period of fiftyeight years, from the sixtieth to the seventysecond Olympiad, and the battle of Marathon, sculpture throughout Greece was vigorously exercised, and with corresponding success. At Athens, which, though distinguished in the very commencement of our narrative, has subsequently appeared in the back ground, Pisistratus laid the foundation of that school whence afterwards issued the new lights of the art. This extraordinary man perceived and applied the proper remedy to the poverty of Attica: he introduced manufactures and encouraged commerce; and while the true sources of political greatness were thus opened, the more enviable supremacy of his country was secured in the intellectual empire of literature and the arts of elegance. Yet this man has been termed, in the history of that very country, a tyrant, because he saved her from her worst enemy, the mob—miscalled free citizens—slaves of their own passions, and agents in the hands of demagogues. Our own times are not without similar prejudices. Mankind seem destined, in all ages, to be the dupes of fears and of phantoms which they themselves have evoked, and which distract attention from real danger. Happy that state, governed by rulers, who, like Pisistratus, will respect the essentials of free institutions, who will consecrate the resources of the state to promote the national grandeur, and save the people from themselves! Under his protection were assembled the most esteemed artists of all descriptions: of sculptors, Eucharis was famous for the figures of warriors in armour; and Callon for statues of bronze. Callimachus is praised as master of all the arts of design, and in sculptural composition had introduced a lightness and elegance before unattained.

In other parts of Greece, during the same interval, were the following: Dameas, of whose works, the statue of his compatriot Milo was the most celebrated, and which the latter, among his other wonderful feats, carried to the place of erection. Polycletus, the first of the name, and his master Ageladas, finished at Argos, their native city, the statue of Cleosthenes in a car, soon after the sixtyseventh Olympiad, and one of the greatest works yet undertaken. At Sicyon were the brothers Canachus and Aristocles, whose two Muses were the finest statues then known; and of which, one is supposed to be the famous antique now in the Barbarini palace. Ascarus, at Elis, produced a Jupiter crowned with flowers; Menecmus and Soidas a Diana, afterwards placed in the palace of Augustus. Menecmus was the first who wrote on the principles of his art. The Dioscorides of Egesias, contemporary with the Persian invasion, have, by a misinterpretation of Pliny, been assigned to the figures now on Monte Cavallo, at Rome.

The victory of Marathon, B. C. 490, inspired fresh vigour into the genius and institutions of Greece. From this date, to the government of Pericles, intervenes a period in moral grandeur, the brightest, perhaps, in Grecian history. Of the sculptors who then flourished, the immediate predecessors, or early contemporaries, of Phidias, the following were the chief: Onatas and Glaucias, of Egina; the one modelled an admirable statue of Gelon, king of Syracuse; the other, an iconic figure of Theagines of Thasos, four hundred times victorious in the public games. Critias replaced the statues of Harmodias and Aristogiton, the originals having been carried off by Xerxes. Calamis was still more renowned for his horses, which were likewise iconic statues—a proof how early nature was admitted as the only guide in every department of sculpture. Pythagoras of Rhegium surpassed all his predecessors; his statues of Enthymus and Astylas, conquerors in the Olympic games, were masterpieces of form; and in expression, his Philoctetes exhibited deeper and truer sentiment than had yet appeared in any work. The name of Pythagoras, indeed, is closely associated with the general advancement of the art, as ranking among the inventors of that system of proportion which, derived from nature, taught to unite elegance with truth, and which invariably guided the practice, while its perfection was improved by the discoveries, of each succeeding master. In the mechanical department, also, his manner was more bold, firm, and graceful, in delicacy of style being placed by Quintilian inferior only to Myron, the last and the greatest of the early school.

Myron, a native of EleutherÆ, exercised his profession chiefly at Athens, of which he enjoyed the citizenship. The decline of his life corresponds with the early labours of Phidias: Myron thus unites the first and second ages of Grecian sculpture, combining in his works many of the essential excellences of its perfection, with some of the remaining hardness and defects of its pupillage. In adopting this chronology, we seem to reconcile conflicting opinions both with each other and with history. The principal works of Myron were in bronze, and the most colossal in wood; consequently, no original of his hand has come down to modern times. There can, however, be no doubt that the famous Discobolos is preserved to us in more than one antique repetition. Hence, and from the writings of the orators and historians, a fair estimate of his merits may be deduced. His composition was distinguished for energy, science, and truth. Iconic statues he carried to a degree of excellence and vigour, as in the portrait of Ladus, unsurpassed in any succeeding age. The Bacchus, Erectheus, and Apollo, executed by order of the state, were not less admired by the Athenians; the last, carried away by Antony, was restored to them by Augustus, in consequence of a dream. His representations of animals were equally admirable; and seem, if possible, to have been more universally praised, judging from the circumstance of no fewer than thirtysix laudatory poems on the famous heifer being still extant in the Anthology. Myron carried mere imitative art to its utmost limits; yet in some of the minor details, the dry manner of the first ages appeared. Sculpture, as the representation of the external form, he perfected; but as an instrument of touching the heart—of elevating the imagination—of embodying sentiment, he proved unequal to call forth its powers. He represented nature forcibly and with fidelity, but without grandeur or ideal elevation. An important approach, however, to just conceptions of abstract beauty, is to be perceived in the principle which he is said first to have promulgated,—that propriety in the separate parts was beauty, or that a work of art was beautiful as a whole, according as the partial forms and proportions corresponded to their offices and to the general character. This, in fact, is the essence of corporeal beauty, the highest refinement of material art; and assigns to form, independent of mind, the noblest expression of which it is susceptible. This is the utmost range attained by the genius of this the first period in the history of art in Greece, and an admirable ground-work for the sublimity, and refined perceptions of the beautiful, added in the era that followed.

Casting a retrospect over the ages that have passed in review, how are we struck with the slow and painful growth of human invention! The collective energies and discoveries of a thousand years were required to rear the arts of Greece—not to their perfection, but to the state where the first decided approaches to it commence. Such is the length of time from the first feeble glimmerings of imitative art to the era of DipÆnus and Scyllis, Bupalus and Anthermus. The interval of forty years occupied by these artists, from the fiftieth to the sixtieth Olympiad, may be considered as terminating the old, and introducing the new school. The art was now in possession of all the means and instruments, the correct application of which bound the aspirings and the praise of mediocrity, but which merely become subservient to the aims of loftier minds. During part of this period, also, these means were industriously, and with daily improving skill, employed. From this date to the battle of Marathon, an interval of fifty-eight years, improvement was rapid in every corner of Greece and her colonies. Fortunately, also, the movement then given to Sculpture was one of diffuse activity, not an influence derived from, and sustained amongst, a few leading minds, whose authority might thus have operated fatally, by binding down to fixed and imperfect modes the aspirings of future genius. This advantage was secured by the number of independent states forming the Grecian confederacy, a constitution, which, throughout the whole history of ancient art, exercised the most beneficial effects, both by preventing mannerism, in taste, and by nourishing emulation.

The Persian invasion, the victories of Marathon, Salamis, and Platea, awakened a new energy in the moral character of Greece, infusing at the same time into her institutions a vigour and a stability before unknown. From the elevation she had now attained among the nations of the earth, her genius rushed forward as from vantage ground. In every field of mental enterprise, indeed, a certain preparation had already been made, and in some the best exertions had long been achieved. In poetry a sublimity had been attained, which has yet set at nought all succeeding rivalry. But in that knowledge, and in those arts, which depend less upon individual eminence, and more upon the circumstances of the times, and upon a strong national interest,—in all those studies which embrace numbers by their consequences or their success, which demand the union of patient perseverance with high talent, and finally, which pertain to the business of public life, and require deep insight into the nicer distinctions of human character—all, from this happy era, with an almost supernatural progress, attained maturity.

The opulence and security, with the resulting consciousness of power, and the love of elegance, which followed the defeat of the Barbarians, proved especially propitious to the arts of sculpture and architecture. If in the former any doubt be entertained, what the difference of improvement was between the artists who preceded and those who followed the age of Xerxes, we have only to recall the fortunes of the drama during the same heart-stirring period. In the last of the 74th Olympiad, A. C. 489, or one year after the battle of Marathon, Æschylus placed the first wreath upon the solemn brow of Tragedy. Not twenty years afterwards, the warrior bard was vanquished by his youthful rival. Between the Prometheus of Æschylus, then, and the Œdipus of Sophocles, we find as wide an interval as is necessary to suppose between the sculptures contemporary with the former, and the productions of Polycletus or Myron.